Trump threatens to end all US trade with Spain over withholding of air bases
( March 3, 2026, 18:38 GMT | Official Statement) -- MLex Summary: US President Donald Trump said he's directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to cut off all trade with Spain over the nation’s refusal to allow the US access to its air bases for strikes on Iran. Trump made the remarks during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Germany has been great. He has been terrific. Others have been very good, terrific. I think that the head of NATO, Mark, is fantastic. Mark Rutte. I think he’s fantastic. But some of the European- like Spain has been terrible. In fact, I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. Spain, first of all, it started when every European nation, at my request, paid 5%, which they should be doing and everybody was enthusiastic about it, Germany, everybody, and Spain didn’t do it. And now Spain actually said that we can’t use their bases and that’s all right. We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody’s going to tell us not to use it. But we don’t have to, but they were unfriendly and so I told them we don’t want- Spain has absolutely nothing that we need, other than great people. They have great people. But they don’t have great leadership. And as you know, they were the only country that NATO would not agree to go up to 5%. I don’t think they would agree to go up to anything. They wanted to keep it at 2% and they don’t pay the 2%. So we’re going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want to have anything to do with Spain. By the way, I’m not happy with the U.K. either. That island that you read about, the lease, for whatever reason, he made a lease of the island and somebody came and took it away from him. And it’s taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land there. It would have been much more convenient landing there as opposed to flying many extra hours. So we are very surprised. This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with....
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